Month: March 2015

We are hearing cricket commentators, talk radio hosts, lounge-lizard commentators complaining that cricket has become a game for batsmen to the sake of the bowlers. This is rubbish.

Sometimes a batter dominates a game, see Gayle 215, Warner 178, Villers 162* etc…sometimes a bowler dominates, see Southee 7/33, Starc 6/26, Boult 5/27 etc…What about Vettori 3.21 runs per over, Tredwell at 3.57, Starc at 3.67. Seems some bowlers are happy to dominate the game, and not allow the batters to run the show.

Most importantly though the theme to much of this commentary is batting dominates the game now. Lets look at that.

To date at the Cricket World Cup 2015 the average winning score has been 266 runs. That includes results like match 26 when Australia won by close to 200 runs and Game 13 where India scored 130 more runs that South Africa. So all the largest totals are in that 266 average, regardless of what the losing score was.

At the 1992 Cricket World Cup the average winning score was 211 and at the ’92 World Cup there wasn’t the minnows as there are now, and we didn’t see the massive disparity in some scores. That means today the average is higher than ’92 due in part to several massive blow-outs thanks to the smaller nations.

Even taking that into consideration, the difference between the average winning score today, and 23 years ago is around 50 runs a match, or 1 run per over and I’m respectfully sorry Sir Curtly, an average increase of 1 run per over does not equate a balanced competition of two decades ago, turning to an unfair batting advantage in 2015.

Or point out that her husband seems to have stolen the idea for his video as pointed out beautifully on Youtube by Lauren Mulcahy

Or that why would someone be looking for originality in a talent show where everyone sings covers…anyone else see the problem there?

I could point out that Willy Moon’s most successful song ever got itself to #175 on the French music charts, or indeed not how successful Ms. Kills has been getting several of her songs into European charts, notably a single getting all the way to #96 in the Netherlands.

I could also point out that whist she was berating the contestant, the host was standing beside him…dressed exactly the same.

I could point these things out, but I won’t because that would be playing their game.

There are two possibilities here, the first is that Natalia Kills was instructed by Producers to go off on someone to make the show more engaging, the second is she genuinely did it herself. Both possibilities unfortunately show that Ms. Kills may be gifted as a musician, but intellectually she is lacking.

If the Producers of X-Factor instructed her to play the Simon Cowell card, then she deserves this years Razzie award for worst performance ever as she well over shot, demonstrating no understanding of the market she is in, showing no judgement in how she went about it, and now faces the backlash. If she genuinely believes what she said, which is basically “my husband owns the intellectual property to slick hair and a suit” (something Stuff.co.nz debunked beautifully today) and got offended that someone had copied him, then she is a genuine moron.

My gut tells me that the comments were a ruse, either under instruction or not, to ‘liven’ up the show. If Natalia made the comments off her own volition then my guess is she is trying to do a Keith Urban and move from a smaller market to get picked up as a judge in the UK on a larger show.

I haven’t watched any of X-Factor other than the video of the incident today, and I don’t think this will cause me to start watching. The idea of creating controversy to gain audience doesn’t work long term, especially in NZ, some viewers may tune in tonight to see the train wreck, but it’ll likely hurt the programme long term and it doesn’t held the individual as we’re not a big enough market to make the ‘news’ turn into massive sales.

So, if we agree that Natalia Kills ‘aint the sharpest tool in the shed, we then have to also acknowledge that her husband is far dimmer than even she as he went off on a rant accusing the contestant of looking like Norman Bates and because of his wife’s critique, suggesting he looked like he was going to kill everybody. Does he realise that he just said that they guy…who looks like him…looks like a serial killer?

So what do we do, firstly I think it would be brilliant for the contestant (who no doubt will now get the highest votes tonight) should cover a song either by Mr. Moon or Ms. Kills next week (that idea is copyright Pat Brittenden 🙂 ) and the rest of us should probably be happy that Mediaworks is obviously an equal opportunity employer allows the mentally deficient to work on camera.

UPDATE

Obviously in late breaking news Ms. Kills and Mr. Moon are now no longer part of the X-Factor Family

Like this:

So I’ve geeked out and had a look at the likely line-ups for the Quarters and Semis for #CWC15.

In my predictions the only guess that I’m not so sure about is if England or Bangladesh will be there but either way they end up in the same place in the Quarters, to be knocked out by India.

So my predictions for the final pool positions, and the run through the knock-out stage looks like this.

I have taken out my abacus and worked some MS-DOS based logarithms to get the right teams in the correct Quarters as some teams (if there) are guaranteed certain games, but if you see an error I am happy to be corrected.

I also think that QF1 is ripe for an upset and Sri Lanka could knock out South Africa and there’s a slim chance that Pakistan could upset Australia. When it comes to the Semis it’s actually anybody’s game and I won’t stand by them with such certainty.

I do think that if Australia is in the final, they will win…that’s my head talking, not my heart obviously.

About a month ago I discovered The Walking Dead and have spent the past four weeks watching the first four and a half series and now I’ve caught up to where the series is at.

With my overdose of TWD I have a few questions that I hope some other aficionados of the show may be able to answer.

Why don’t the survivors sleep in/live in the trees? I mean if they can assemble walls and communities then surely they could make a community off the ground. But even if they didn’t live in the trees, wouldn’t sleeping in them at night be a better idea than on the ground?

Why don’t the survivors head to the water? If there are vehicles that have petrol, then surely there’d be boats etc that could be utilised to live off shore.

Why doesn’t anybody refer to the ‘dead’ as Zombies? Series one was set in present time. This means that every character that lived in the world before it fell would have had an understanding of the mythical idea of Zombies, these are Zombies, why does no one use the word?

How did the dead get such strong teeth? As the rest of their bodies seem to fall apart at the slightest touch, what has happened to make their teeth so strong to tear through skin and muscle.

Why does it seem there can only be one main male black character? T-Dog dies the same episode Tyresse turns up, Tyreese dies just as Noah becomes part of the core cast.

Anyway I realise that it is a drama and doesn’t need to always connect the dots, but maybe you have some thoughts around the programme or maybe just want to share you love of TWD